Who is Jean-Pierre Bemba and how did he rise to power
in the heart of darkness? Did Bemba order his rebel soldiers to cannibalize
pygmies? Or is that another Western myth manufactured to malign an African
leader and feed stereotypes of tribal savagery? What is Bemba’s relationship to
the competitors of George Walker Bush and the friends of William Jefferson
Clinton? How is Bemba linked to blood diamonds in Africa and mercenary armies
in Iraq? Why have troops from Uganda recently re-invaded Congo and why have the
United Nations and international press been silent about it?

After
a decade of war and millions of lost lives in Congo the most basic truths
remain hidden.

In
an August 3, 2007 Al-Jazeera interview held at his villa on millionaires
row in Portugal, Congolese warlord-turned-opposition-Senator-in-exile
Jean-Pierre Bemba spoke with a coy smile about bringing democracy and freedom
to Congo.[1]
Asked about accusations at the International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague,
Bemba insured the interviewer that he was not a candidate for any war crimes
tribunal. “I am not of course involved in any of these things,” Bemba said.
“Check your information,” Bemba replied, when pressed, indicating that it’s all
been fixed.

Like
a modern day Pretty Boy Floyd out of Africa, the baby-faced Jean-Pierre
Bemba—who chillingly resembles the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin—has
behaved like a spoiled brat with a private army. And his great white fathers
have protected him.

MWANA CONGO—SON OF THE CONGO

Congolese
warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba was born November 4, 1962, less than two years after
the assassination of Congolese nationalist Patrice Lumumba, in Gbadolite, a
city in what was soon to become Zaire, on the border of the Central African
Republic. He attended university in Belgium, traveling back to Kinshasa as a
member of Zaire’s elites. Congolese supporters have called him Mwana
Congo—“son of Congo.”

Jean-Pierre
Bemba’s mother died when he was twelve. His father, Bemba Saolona, was a close
confidante of Joseph Mobutu, Zaire’s 36-year CIA-backed president, and of
Juvenal Habyarimana, the Rwandan president assassinated on April 6, 1994 by
Major Paul Kagame and the Rwandan Patriotic Army/Front (RPA/F).[2]
Bemba Saolona remarried a niece of Mobutu’s main political rival, the infamous
Etienne Tshisekedi.

Bemba
Saolona is a millionaire tycoon who was jailed by former President Laurent
Desire Kabila after the U.S.-backed invasion took Zaire (1996-1997) renamed it
the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). By 1999 Bemba Saolona was Minister of
Economy and Industry in the new Laurent Kabila government, even while his son
Jean-Pierre, head of the Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC), was leading a rebellion against it.[3]

At
the start of the MLC rebellion (1999), Papa Bemba was concerned about his
little boy. “This is a message from Papa,” the New York Times quoted
Bemba Saolona, then 60, “he should really think hard about what he is doing.” [4]

“I’m
not a kid any more,” replied baby-faced Bemba, then 39. “I can fly on my own
wings.” [5]

Bemba
Saolona is tied to the Central African Republic (CAR) and the criminal networks
of CAR President Ange-Félix Patassé (1993-2003). The CAR capital Bangui
provides a major economic lifeline for the northern Congolese city of
Gbadolite, a stronghold of the Bemba and Mobutu families and a major
transshipment point for blood diamonds.

Bemba
Saolona for decades worked with Ugandan elites involved in networks of
criminalized and coercive taxation, racketeering and extortion that plundered
eastern Zaire/Congo. One Bemba Saolona enterprise is the Enzymes &
Raffineries Company (ENRA), based in
Beni, North Kivu, where Saolona has a tourist hotel and plantations.[6]
Saolona Bemba did not visit ENRA during the war (1996-2005), but maintained
regular contact, while ENRA “remained independent” but paid taxes to the Congolese
Rally for Democracy (RCD) rebel army, allied with Rwanda and controlled by
Congolese warlord and later DRC vice-president Mbusa Nyamwisi, a long-time
Ugandan ally.[7]

Saolona
Bemba’s private airport at ENRA had one dirt runway with no lights, yet during
the war it was buzzing with big and small aircraft landing and taking off with
amazing frequency.[8] From 1998 to
at least 2002, the Uganda People’s Defense Forces (UPDF) used the ENRA compound
as a holding facility for interrogation and torture operations.[9]
MONUC—the United Nations Observers Mission in Congo—for at least
six years (2001-2006) leased landing rights at the private ENRA airport: during
the rebellion ENRA territory was controlled by the RCD rebels, making MONUC an
indirect financial backer of the RCD rebellion; MONUC payments to ENRA later
benefited Bemba Saolona.[10]

From
the age of thirty, Jean-Pierre Bemba vastly expanded his private fortune
following in his father’s footsteps as personal assistant (1992-1997) of Joseph
Mobutu, the dictator of Zaire (1965-1997): the Bembas father and son share responsibility
for the terrorism sown by Mobutu’s Special Presidential Division (DSP) and
Military Action and Intelligence Service (SARM), which ran secret torture
centers in Kinshasa, massacred students, and raped and pillaged as state
policy.[11]

Bemba
was a vice-president in the transitional DRC government (2003-2006), while his top military commanders, Brigadier
General Malik Kijege
and Major General Dieudonné Amuli Bahigwa, were made big chiefs for the Armed Forces of the
Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC).

Worth
hundreds of millions of dollars, Jean-Pierre Bemba’s DRC enterprises have
included electronics, aviation and television. Cathy Bemba, Jean-Pierre’s
sister, married Franćois Joseph Nzanga Mobutu, one of the dictator’s sons, in
1994. Like Bemba and most all the others, Nzanga Mobutu paid the $50,000
presidential candidature entry fee in the 2006 elections with funds gained by
betraying the Congolese people. After the 2006 elections, Nzanga got his
younger brother, Albert Philipe Giala Kassa Mobutu, and eight other
individuals, “elected” to parliament (achieved by buying votes and support
through sheer financial clout).

The
World Bank, International Monetary Fund and European Community financed
numerous parastatal entities in DRC involved, for example, in disarmament,
demobilization, electioneering or “humanitarian” operations, and more than $600
million dollars of this money disappeared in the past few years. Exemplifying
the alleged graft, each of the 600 Congolese parliamentarians received a new
car, each purchase passing through Cathy Bemba Mobutu, allegedly bringing her
$1000 per car.[12]

MOVEMENT
FOR THE LIQUIDATION OF CONGO

Jean-Pierre
Bemba commanded the rebel Army for the Liberation of Congo (ALC)—the armed wing of the Movement for the
Liberation of Congo (MLC)—from
1998 to 2003. Bemba’s military “adventures” in Congo began in partnership with
General Kpama Baramoto, former national commander in chief of Mobutu’s elite Garde
Civile, and Uganda’s President Yoweri
Museveni. Some 30 former Mobutuist officers of Zaire’s national army, the Forces
Armée Zairois (FAZ), met with Museveni and Bemba in Uganda in 1999.
Bemba ousted several Mobutuist partners who fled with millions of dollars to
Europe and Canada, or to luxury mansions under the protection of Nelson
Mandela’s African National Congress in South Africa, a haven from which they
pursued illegal arms and mercenary activities.[13]

Ugandan
President Yoweri Museveni supplied Bemba’s “rebellion” with troops, equipment
and training. Museveni’s Ugandan People’s Defense Forces’ (UPDF) 305th
Brigade was trained by the Pentagon’s Africa Crises Response Initiative (ACRI)
in western Uganda, just prior to seizing control of Kisangani in 1998.[14]
The Israeli mercenary firm Silver Shadow reportedly supplied the UPDF/MLC
alliance.[15] The MLC’s
primary bases of operations were Gbadolite and Kisangani.

The
MLC was supplied from the Central Africa Republic and Uganda, but the political
base was in Belgium. Soon after the MLC opened their “rebellion” against the
Laurent Kabila government (1998), Jean-Pierre Bemba flew from Gbadolite to
Lisala, another Mobutu stronghold with a palatial mansion, where the state bank
managers turned all funds over to Bemba; banks in Gemena, Bumba and other
cities were also emptied for Bemba.[16]

Numerous
Mobutu era cronies joined the MLC uprising and collaborated with Bemba, and
many of these hold positions of power in Kinshasa today.

The
MLC rebels allied with the rebel Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD), a
movement/army first supported by Rwanda and Uganda, but later split by greed
and personalities. Scores of militias in Congo were supplied and trained by
both Uganda and Rwanda. The MLC/RCD alliance fought against other RCD factions
to control and command plunder, racketeering, and extortion[17],
and by early 1999 the MLC “rebellion” controlled the northern Congo, east to
west, rich in gold and diamonds, in economic and military partnerships with Ugandan
forces commanded by James Kazini and President Museveni’s half-brother Salim
Saleh, and by Rwandan commanders like James Kabarebe and Laurent Nkunda. The
MLC was Uganda’s primary instrument to plunder Congo.

Burundi
and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (backed by U.S. and Uganda) joined the
MLC/RCD rebellion. Their enemy, Laurent Kabila, was backed by Zimbabwe, Angola,
Namibia, Chad and Sudan (Khartoum). Interests from the U.S. and Canada, Europe,
Israel, South Africa, Australia, Russia and China supported one or the other
and sometimes both sides.

Bemba
also allied with Libya and established military ties with rebels or former
rebels of the Uničo Nacional para a Independźncia Total de Angola (UNITA), which was led by rebel leader Jonas Savimbi.
Senior Ugandan Army officials visited UNITA and Angola between 1996 and 1999,
and UNITA officials, including Jonas Savimbi, visited Museveni and Jean-Pierre Bemba[GON1]
in Uganda.

The
MLC/RCD alliance shipped products from plantations in rebel-held territory
owned by the Blattner Group International: palm oil, coffee, cacao (chocolate),
and rubber were shipped up the Congo River by boat from the Blattner Busira
Lomami plantations in Isangi, to Kisangani, where raw materials were loaded
onto airplanes and shipped to Uganda and/or Rwanda. Planes returned carrying
supplies and weapons for the war.[18]

“During
the war the security was provided by Bemba” said one Blattner director. “Bemba
did not want to destroy the [plantation] company, it was a question of building
relationships.” [19]

In
2002 and 2003 Jean-Pierre Bemba sent MLC troops to the Central African Republic
(CAR) to help President Patassé suppress attempted coup d’etats. General Bozize overthrew his former ally Patassé in
2003 and arrest warrants were issued for Bemba and MLC officers in 2004.
Complaints filed in 2006 at the International Criminal Court (ICC) charged
Bemba and the MLC with massive war crimes and crimes against humanity committed
in CAR from 2001 to 2003; the ICC had taken no action at the time of this
writing.

“I
defy anyone at that court,” Bemba challenged, in 2003, “to say that Jean-Pierre
Bemba raped a single girl in Central Africa, and I challenge anybody to say
that I gave orders for rape.”

BEMBA GAVE ORDERS FOR RAPE

There
are countless documentations and testimonies establishing Jean-Pierre Bemba’s
reign of terror. War crimes and crimes against humanity included persecution,
murder, forced population transfer, torture, rape, sexual slavery, sexual
mutilation and extermination. After October 2002, the MLC/RCD forces swept
across north central Congo with a killing campaign code-named ‘Effacer le
Tableau’—‘Erasing the Board.’[20]

Land
and plunder were attained through sheer terror. Effacer Le Tableau involved cannibalism by MLC and RCD soldiers:
interviews with MLC soldiers in MLC territory in 2004 confirm that cannibalism
and dismemberment occurred across Northern Congo.[21]
The accusations of cannibalism were repeatedly raised against Bemba throughout
the transition and electoral process.[22]
The International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) also took up the case. More
than 350 testimonies collected by the UN confirmed these allegations against
the MLC. [23]

“The
operation was presented to the people almost like a vaccination campaign,
envisioning the looting of each home and the rape of each woman,” said a MONUC
spokesman in Congo. [24]

Effacer
Le Tableau was a covert military
operation commanded by Jean-Pierre Bemba and his top officers, and there are
allegations that Bemba personally participated in rape and cannibalism. One
insider explained, “Soldiers [here] do what their commanders do; no one would
commit these kinds of atrocities if they didn’t think their commanders
supported and condoned them, and they did.” [25]

“The very day (January 15, 2003)
that human rights organizations accused Bemba of cannibalism,” reported Congolese journalist Antoine Lokongo of Congopanorama,
“and the UN Security Council condemned these barbaric acts, André
Flahaut, the Belgian Minister of Defense flew to Gbadolite, Bemba’s fiefdom,
and shook hands with him in front of the world’s cameras.” [26]

Jean-Pierre
Bemba is married to Lillian Teixeira, the daughter of Antonio Teixeira, a
Portuguese born businessman now residing in South Africa. Recall that during
the warlord’s battle in Kinshasa from March 22 to April 11, 2007 Jean-Pierre
Bemba took refuge in the South African Embassy, and then fled to Portugal as a
“tourist” seeking medical treatment.

European,
South African and Libyan interests comprise the key pillars of support behind
Jean-Pierre Bemba. [GON2]But behind or allied with these appear to
be U.S. interests either [1] closely affiliated with the Democratic National
Committee or [2] in direct economic and political competition with the Bush
administration and its allies. International arms dealers John Bredenkamp,
Billy Rautenbach and George Forrest—untouchables known to hold multiple
passports (e.g. South Africa, Zimbabwe, European and U.S.)—have also
likely supplied Bemba with weapons.

LIKE FATHER LIKE SON

Bemba’s
brother-in-law Anthony “Tony” Teixeira deals in blood diamonds, criminal
networks and mercenary operations, but the diamonds are stamped as certifiably
clean and conflict free by the Kimberley Process, the international diamond
certification scheme created by intelligence operatives at Harvard University.[27]
Bemba has at times moved some one to three million dollars in diamond sales
monthly.[28]

Tony
Teixeira is one of three pivotal businessmen who, along with Jacques Lemaire
and Victor Bout, were cited in 2000 for sanctions-busting by supporting the
UNITA rebels in Angola’s war.[29]
UNITA (Uničo Nacional para a Independźncia Total de Angola) was covertly backed by the CIA during the Reagan and
G.H.W. Bush administrations, but abandoned in the Clinton era. UNITA dealt in
diamonds and threatened the interests of the Angolan government of President José
Eduardo dos Santos. The Angolan diamond cartels involve Israeli-American tycoon
Maurice Tempelsman[GON3]
and Russian tycoon Lev Leviev, both close to the Clintons and their friends,
and to the Israeli Mossad, and U.S. corporations were hungry for control of
Angola’s offshore oil.[30]

Victor
Bout runs an air transport company and was also cited by the UN Panel of
Experts for the illegal extraction of natural resources from DRC. On November
22, 2006, the G.W. Bush government re-designated the official status of Victor
Bout—who previously had a “special” designation apparently reserved for
weapons suppliers, diamond dealers, drug lords and other syndicated criminals
tied to the elites in the USA—and froze some of Bout’s central Africa
assets.

The
G.W. Bush action supported the Joseph Kabila government and its
backers—at the expense of competing interests: Russian arms dealer Victor
Bout’s ties to multiple combatants in DRC involved interests aligned with the
Democratic National Committee that have backed guerrilla warfare in Sudan,
Rwanda and Congo. The ascension of Israeli-American diamond kingpins Beny
Steinmetz and Dan Gertler displaced the DeBeers and the Oppenheimers monopoly
out of South Africa, and Maurice Tempelsman, and these latter interests have
likely been using Jean-Pierre Bemba to leverage access to minerals and
contracts in the Kasai and Katanga provinces.

Bemba
and his brother-in-law Tony Teixeira also profited from Teixeira’s dealings
with Central Africa Republic President Ange-Félix Patassé through Teixeira’s
Central Africa Mining Company (CAMCO) and Central Africa Diamond Company
(CADCO). [31]

DiamondWorks ha been financed by
the U.K.’s Lyndhurst Ltd., a company controlled by a consortium led by
Teixeira. DiamondWorks was originally formed from a merger between Robert and
Eric Friedland’s Carson Gold and Branch Energy. The Friedlands are “friends of Bill”
Clinton.[34]
Buckingham’s Branch Energy works in Uganda.

Buckingham’s Heritage Oil and
Gas is involved in Kazakhstan, Russia, Iraq, Oman, Kurdistan, Gabon and on Lake
Albert—on both sides of the war-torn DRC-Uganda border—where fighting between the Congolese FARDC
army and Ugandan soldiers and Heritage Oil guards killed a British Heritage Oil
subcontractor on August 3, 2007.[35]

Heritage
Oil (Canada) and Tullow Oil (London)— operating around Lake
Albert—are using the Bemba-Museveni military alliance to pressure the
Kabila government in Kinshasa, partly because Kabila is looking east to China,
partly because Kabila is close to Bush and the Israeli lobby, while Saudi
Arabian and Omani interests (e.g. Bechtel, Heritage) are closer to Uganda.

By September 5, 2007, UPDF
troops—and rebels reportedly aligned with Jean-Pierre Bemba—had
occupied the DRC’s oil- and gold-rich Semliki Basin on the western shores of
Lake Albert. Heavily armed foreign forces occupied the villages of Aru, Mahagi,
Fataki, Irengeti and the Ruwenzori mountains.[36]
The international press and MONUC remained completely silent about the Ugandan
incursions. By September 8, 2007, Ugandan troops were heavily massed on the DRC
border while Kabila and Museveni were signing oil and gold sharing agreements
in Tanzania. UPDF forces and “rebel” troops alleged to be Bemba’s remained in
DRC as of September 15.

One Heritage partner is Maurel
and Prom, a leading European oil firm “with a strong presence in Africa since
French colonial days.” [37]
Heritage principal Micael Gulbenkian is renowned for his deep ties to Iraqi oil
since 1920. One long-time Buckingham partner is Tim Spicer, now running a $430
million Pentagon contract in Iraq, fraudulently awarded, for Aegis Defense
Services, a mercenary firm also involved in Kenya—an extension of
clandestine U.S. interests sowing terror in Uganda, Somalia, Sudan, Rwanda,
Ethiopia and Congo. Bechtel subsidiary Nexant is involved in the oil pipeline
being constructed across Uganda to the U.S. military port at Mombasa Kenya.

The UPDF/Museveni government
genocide against the Acholi people of northern Uganda is driven by
transboundary petroleum and gold concessions linked to foreign corporations
like Heritage, Tullow, and Bechtel.[38]
Uganda and Rwanda are two of the Pentagon’s premier military partners in
Africa: some 150 U.S. Special Forces were added to the Pentagon’s Uganda
arsenal in March 2007 and U.S. and U.K. military have been training UPDF
troops.[39]

EXXON (ESSO) discovered oil in
Equateur during the Mobutu reign, but—apparently—Mobutu’s
insistence on domestic refining sidelined the project; the petroleum reserves
in Equateur have recently been “discovered” and these reserves—in
territory controlled by Bemba and the MLC—were clearly at stake in the
wars of 1996-2004. On a 1997 petroleum industry map the huge Equateur Province
concession (labeled “Trillion”) stretches more than 120,000 square kilometers
into the rainforest of the Congo River basin.

There
is also a criminal Portuguese connection to the logging sector through
concessions granted in areas under Bemba’s MLC control to two secretive
Portuguese businessmen. Jose Albano Maia Trindade and Jočo Manuel Maia Trindade
control four companies SODIFOR, SOFORMA, FARABOLA and Compagnie ForestiŹre
et de Transformation (CFT, a
subsidiary of NST Sedeada Holdings of Liechtenstein); financing reportedly
comes from Switzerland. The Portuguese Trindade brothers reportedly evade all
rents and taxes to the DRC government and have been ripping out the rainforest
as fast as possible.[40]

“The
Portuguese brothers got eight million hectares,” said Belgian Georges Somja, owner of Lisala-based
SICOBOIS, another Belgian logging company exploiting Equateur province through
slavery and theft, near a SOFORMA concession. “They paid money completely under
the table. It was all corruption.” [41]

“Who
supports Bemba?” said one insider in Kinshasa. “That is the question. It is the
Democrats in the U.S., because they support Uganda and Rwanda. They are behind
the petroleum interests. Portugal supports Bemba. South Africa supports Bemba.
They can say what they want but it’s very clear that there are some games going
on in the back. And businessmen like the Blattners support both Kabila and
Bemba.” [42]

THE
PAGE IS TURNED

Another
foreign interlocutor in Congolese affairs is Spanish diplomat Javier Solana,
now EU Foreign Policy and Security Chief, and the former NATO Secretary General
who ordered the illegal bombing of Serbia to support the “humanitarian”
Clinton/Albright diplomacy. In diplomatic talks with Bemba in September 2006, Javier
Solana reportedly offered Bemba a buy-out deal to step aside before the October
2006 presidential run-off.[43]
Jean-Pierre Bemba refused, and the warlord’s fought it out like spoiled brats
in the Congo’s “War of Three Days”—March 22-25, 2007.[44]

On
July 13, 2007, EU Commissioners Louis Michel and Javier Solana met with
Jean-Pierre Bemba at his villa in Faro, Portugal. The two commissioners praised
the baby-faced Bemba after the meeting, noting his commitment to “constructive”
engagement, peace and cooperation. “Mr. Bemba,” the EU Commissioners announced
to the Western press—Jean-Pierre Bemba was himself not allowed to come
outside and appear before the press—“wants to engage honestly and loyally
in a debate on the future of the Congo.” [45]

Like
a little boy, the baby-faced Jean-Pierre Bemba received his marching orders and
was sent to his room (villa).

“He
wishes to examine in greater detail the solutions needed to attain the
Millennium Development Goals,” said Louis Michel, the great white father from
Belgium, “which he deems a priority in his vision of a modern Congo; this
includes issues such as gender equality, social cohesion through dialogue
between partners, decentralization, the mobilization of the Diaspora, the emergence
of a participatory and dynamic civil society and the necessary reform of the
security system (Justice, Army, Police). He also intends to lend his
unconditional support to the country’s unity and to an external policy of good
neighborly relations.”

The great white fathers had
hardly finished outlining Bemba’s reformation when reports began to claim that
baby-faced Bemba was meeting with President Museveni in Uganda. Soon Congolese
survivors in frontier towns saw Ugandan military and their “rebel” allies—believed
to be Bemba’s boys—marching into Congo with their bombs and their guns
and their other deadly toys.

Jean-Pierre Bemba met with
Rwandan warlord General Laurent Nkunda during his Vice-Presidency and he is now
one of General Nkunda's secret backers in the ongoing bloodletting that claims
some 1000 lives a day in eastern Congo. There
are reports that Nkunda sent soldiers to Kinshasa to support Bemba in the
warlord's deadly battle of March 22-25, 2007—now described as an
“attempted coup” by Jean-Pierre Bemba and the Western warlords behind him.[46]
Bemba's buying off of high-level MONUC officials—as MONUC sources
allege—would partially explain MONUC's unwillingness to challenge or
dislodge General Nkunda.[47]

But
the Kabila government is looking east: on September 17, 2007 a “resource
hungry” China signed an agreement to invest five billion dollars in Congos'
infrastructure. Anglo-European interests are now using the military occupation
of General Laurent Nkunda—backed by clients regimes in Uganda and Rwanda,
by Jean-Pierre Bemba and MONUC—to leverage their position with Kabila.
Nkunda earns at least $100,000 a month in extortion and minerals theft, and he
is buying officials. Most important, General Laurent Nkunda is the “insurance
policy” for the U.S. and German companies preventing Congo's access to the
Lueshe niobium mines and other mineral bonanzas, including coltan, cassiterite
and, allegedly, uranium, under Nkunda's control.

It
is apparent that international capitalism—the warlords behind the warlords—does
not care which black face they put on Congo to mask their predatory white
enterprises. Like Patrice Lumumba, General Sani Abacha, Thomas Sankara and
Laurent Kabila, those who step out of line are removed, one way or another.
Chaos and deconstruction are often favored. Atrocities and genocides are
selectively declared, selectively punished. Those black leaders who cooperate
to further the fictions of Africa controlled by Africans are rewarded, the
corruption and atrocities are ignored, and the page is turned. ~

[6] Saolona Bemba is the main shareholder in ENRA, though
ENRA describes itself as a “public” company. ENRA also manufactures fine finishedfurniture sold to European customers,
and produces a rare powdered papaya enzyme, papaine, used in European pharmaceutical,
beer and food products. The RPA/F seized
huge stocks of coffee and papaine in 1996 and stored them in Kigali for two
years. The RPA/F forced ENRA agents in Europe to buy back the papaine because
all other potential European buyers balked. Private communication, Robert
Ducarme, ENRA, August 16, 2007.

[7] Nyamwisi was allegedly involved with DARA Forest, a
pirate Ugandan-Thai logging firm, connected to the Museveni regime, which
cut-and-run widely in Oreintale and North Kivu; some DARA Forest logs ended up
at ENRA. Private inspection, ENRA, keith harmon snow, Beni, DRC, 2005. One
partner in DARA’s war-based plunder of DRC’s timber was DARA Tropical
Hardwoods, Portland, OR. DARA Forest timber was sold to international buyers
and shipped to Belgium, China, Denmark, Japan, Kenya, Switzerland and the USA:
see Report of the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural
Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of DR Congo, UN Security Council,
4/12/01. See also: <http://www.edcnews.se/Reviews/DRC-UNReport010412-C.html>.

[13] Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations in
Africa, 1992-1999, Mellon Press, 1999: p. 422-423. Baramoto is in Belgium
today, there are rumors that he has some relationship with General Laurent
Nkunda. According to an International Crises Group report of 13 August 1998, North
Kivu Into The Quagmire, Mobutu generals Baramoto, Mavhe and Nzimbi
reportedly organized the RCD movement. However, the Mobutuists were apparently
excluded by Kigali. Private interview, PG, December 2006.

[14] Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations in
Africa, 1992-1999, Mellon Press, 1999: p. 463. ACRI was apparently the work
of Susan Rice, Undersecretary of State for African Affairs, in the Clinton
Administration. As a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Susan Rice is
today one of the most vocal advocates for decisive military action to “Stop
Genocide!” and “Save Darfur!”—again, by any means necessary.[79]
ACRI’s Uganda trainees also worked with the SPLA in South Sudan. Susan Rice
reportedly has close ties with ex-National Security Council staffer Shawn
McCormick who went to work for BP, one of the oil companies (formerly Amoco)
with concessions interests in Somalia today; Rice is also very close with Roger
Winter of USAID.

[27] See: keith harmon snow and Rick Hines, “Blood
Diamonds: Doublethink and Deception About Those Worthless Little Rocks of
Desire,” Z Magazine, June & July 2007, published in full at <www.allthingspass.com>.

[39] See Indian Ocean Newsletter, March 2007, and
“Uganda: A glimmer of Hope,” Africa Confidential, Vol. 41, Number 9,
2004.

[40] Personal interviews with Belgian and
Congolese logging principals, DRC, 2004-2006. Where concession taxes or rents
are paid the Congolese state earns about one cent ($US 0.01) per hectare.
Concessions rights, granted for thirty years, have been taken from Congolese
villages in exchange for compensation
totaling less than $200. Logs of the precious dark wood Aformosia species sell at Congo’s Matadi port for $US
7000-10,000 each. Logging firms operating all over Congo have been ripping out
timber as fast as possible. Besides the World Bank, the World Wildlife Fund and
other “conservation” organizations have facilitated this thievery. See:
Georgianne Nienaber and keith harmon snow, “King Kong: The Curious Activities
of the International Monkey Business,” Parts 1-7, <www.coanews.com>
and <www.allthingspass.com>.

[41] Private interview, Georges Somja, SICOBOIS, Lisala,
2005. One of the Portuguese companies, SODIFOR, is apparently headed up by
Evariste Boshab, a Congolese Professor of Constitutional Law at the University
of Kinshasa and the principal private secretary of president Joseph Kabila during the transition period; Boshab is also described as EU
Commissioner Louis Michel’s “right hand man.”